Introduction Hello to all, in this post, I will be sharing with you how to make Windows Live host your email addresses instead of Google. First off, you may be asking, "Why?". The reason is because, Google has blocked domains with .tk endings. Up until now they don't seem to care if a ton of people keep asking why they can't access their Google Apps account which is a .tk domain. I myself have been part of this sad but true incident. I waited for months for a response from them to my dismay, nothing came. That's the reason I tried to use alternatives. One of which is the service of Windows Live which you can find at http://domains.live.com/.

Requirements You need to have the following in order for you to continue with the series of instructions that will be given here.

A uCoz website that has been attached to a domain already. (See this thread if you haven't attached a domain yet.)

An administrator account on your uCoz website.

A Windows Live account. (If you don't have one you can register here.)

What you will learn from this?

How to configure Windows Live Mail to let it serve as an alternative to Google Apps.

How to add users to your email host.

How to configure mail.yourowndomain.com.

How to let your users have their own user@yourowndomain.com. (Yes, it's possible.)

Added (2011-01-06, 3:58 Am)---------------------------------------------Configuring Windows Live to Work With Your uCoz Website Here you will learn how to setup and configure your email.

STEP 3: On the next window, fill in your attached domain and make sure that the option called Set up Windows Live Hotmail for my domain is selected. After that, click Continue. You will be asked to accept the terms so just click I Accept.

STEP 4: The next step is to confirm that you really own the domain you used. This is a bit tricky than the Google Apps one because it is integrated to the uCoz system while this is not. If you take a closer look at the Windows Live page that has loaded after you registered your domain, you will see different requirements before your domain will be considered confirmed. We will only be needing the first two options to get your custom email going.

STEP 6: Back at Windows Live, you need to take a look at the information about your Mail setup. On the part that says MX server:, there is a URL for the mail server that Windows Live has allotted for you. Copy that then switch to your uCoz tab.

STEP 7: Now at uCoz, on the Subdomain column, provide a @ sign. On the Type column, choose MX from the dropdown list. Finally, on the Value column, indicate 10 yourmxserverurl where yourmxserverurl is the one you copied from the Windows Live page. Don't save it yet and don't close the tab.

STEP 8: Back at the Windows Live page again, take a look at Prove domain ownership. At the part where it says Host:, copy the number beside it then switch again to the uCoz tab.

STEP 9: Again, on the Subdomain column, under your previous entry, provide the number that you copied from the Windows Live page's Host: part. On the Type column, choose CNAME from the dropdown list. On the Value column, provide domains.live.com. When you've done that, it should look like the image below. After doing the previous steps, click Save.

STEP 10: Final step is back at the Windows Live page. On the part where it says You need to prove ownership of this domain by creating an MX record or a CNAME record. Use the settings below., there is a Refresh button. Wait for 3 to 4 hours (sometimes even more number of hours) before clicking the Refresh button in order to allow the uCoz servers some time to update your changes. If you succeeded with the process, you should see the following message.

Added (2011-01-06, 3:59 Am)---------------------------------------------Creating Accounts At the last segment, I told you how to configure your Windows Live Mail. Now you'll learn how to create users for your domain.

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STEP 1: Go to Member accounts and click on the Add button. Once you click it, you will be prompted to fill in the user's information.

STEP 2: Fill in the shown form accordingly then press the OK button.

STEP 3: You will know if the user email has been created if you can see it on the list of users.

STEP 1: You can access your emails by going to http://mail.live.com/. Alternatively, you can configure your website so that you can login via http://mail.yourattacheddomain.com/. I added a sub-tutorial covering how to configure the email URL on your domain but you can skip it below if you don't really want to use it. You can always access your emails using http://mail.live.com/ as an alternative.

SUBTUTORIAL - STEP 1a: This is a sub-tutorial on how to setup http://mail.yourattacheddomain.com/. In your Control Panel, go to Settings > Domain transfer (own domain) then click on Edit domain records in EXPERT MODE.

SUBTUTORIAL - STEP 1b: On the Subdomain column, provide a mail. On the Type column, choose CNAME from the dropdown list. And on the Value column, indicate go.domains.live.com. After that, click the Save button.

SUBTUTORIAL - STEP 1c: At Windows Live, login to http://domains.live.com/ using your Windows Live account. Note that this is different from your domain email address. After logging in, go to Custom addresses then choose Mail from the dropdown list. After doing so, click the Add button.

SUBTUTORIAL - STEP 1d: After clicking the Add button, you will be prompted to enter the CNAME that you used. Type mail in the field and click the OK button.

SUBTUTORIAL - STEP 1e: That should do it but the custom mail domain that you made will not be immediately accessible. Give it 3-4 hours to refresh the servers. While waiting, use http://mail.live.com/ to access your email until such time that your custom URL is then accessible.

STEP 2: On the first-time access to the email address you created, you will need to confirm the email address by providing a few information. This is done to prevent users from abusing the system by creating a whole lot of email addresses that have no particular use. After filling in the form, click on the I accept button.

STEP 3: You're done! You will be welcomed by your inbox. The next time you log in, you will directly be brought to this inbox instead of filling up a confirmation form unlike on step 2.

Added (2011-01-06, 4:00 Am)---------------------------------------------Let Your Users Register This is one of the features that makes me love this service. You can actually let your website users have their own user@yourattacheddomain.com account.

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STEP 1: By default, this option is disabled so you need to enable it first. Login to http://domains.live.com/ with your Windows Live account and go to Settings then click on the Turn open membership on button.

STEP 2: After enabling, you may want to allow your users to register now right? For this, you need to go to the Sign-up module. You can use the module provided by Windows Live or, you can just get the link for registration and give it to your users directly. I prefer to just give the users a sign-up link rather than add the Windows Live module so that's what we'll do. On the Sign-up module, choose In e-mail invitations from the Use your sign-up module part of the page.

STEP 3: When you've done that, inspect the text content for the invitation email and look for the sign-up link. It is normally located at the last line of the invitation email text content.

STEP 4: You can now use your sign-up link. Point your users to there so that they can create their own email address under your domain name.

Added (2011-01-06, 4:00 Am)---------------------------------------------End of Tutorial So there you have it. It took me literally a whole day to get this collected and posted. I didn't even go to work today just so I can deal with this. Hope it's worth it and hope this helps you all. If you have questions or if I failed to cover some things that you want to know about, don't hesitate to post in this thread. I will try to answer it as much as I can. +reps are also welcome.

I sent a request to CreativeCollusions as well as to Natashko to hopefully have this thread moved to the Additional Features category since that is the place where the domain attachment and etc are posted under.

After I have clicked save after adding the Number and value (e.g 20156118621 and domain.live.com)

I waited 3.5 hrs. Before Clicking Refresh as you told

Quote

Final step is back at the Windows Live page. On the part where it says You need to prove ownership of this domain by creating an MX record or a CNAME record. Use the settings below., there is a Refresh button. Wait for 3 to 4 hours (sometimes even more number of hours) before clicking the Refresh button in order to allow the uCoz servers some time to update your changes.

any help of this please im not quite sure of what im doing or i done it wrong it seems that there is nothing change when i hit save in the expert mode saving system of domain attachment. Here the preview...

Thank you for taking the time off work to do this!! It was helpful and I managed to follow all the steps. I hope ucoz update their information soon because Gmail is no longer a free option. Next I hope to follow http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/17328/add-hotmail-live-email-accounts-to-outlook-2010/ so that I can use my new email account from within Outlook. There are two options on this tutorial - a business type option, or down the bottom how too add just send and receive functionality through Outlook 2010.